From cheertloeader CHILD KILLER?
It was 2017, deep into summer, when a popular high school cheerleader from the nice side of town in Carlisle, Ohio, was charged with killing an infant. The county sheriff’s office arrested 18-year-old Brooke Skylar Richardson, claiming that after hiding her pregnancy she gave birth, set fire to the baby and buried it in her backyard. Skylar faced multiple felonies including aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and abuse of a corpse.
As a motive, prosecutor David Fornshell told the story of a teenager obsessed with projecting the perfect image. Skylar and her mother, as he painted them at a press conference, were consumed with “how things appeared to the outside world”. And he dropped this detail to reporters: Skylar had burned the baby, perhaps even while the newborn was still alive. Fornshell had little to go on – no medical proof – but the idea rocketed around Skylar’s conservative community.
Former friends and classmates turned on Skylar. They pumped reporters full of gossip (“Skylar was the school slut”; “Skylar wrapped her stomach with cellophane to stop the baby from growing”). Some tiptoed onto the Richardsons’ lawn, their phones aimed and ready, hoping for a snapshot they could sell to the press. Even the hairdresser who Skylar had been going to for years sat on a porch across the street taking pictures.
Then there were the Facebook groups. “Justice for Baby Jane Doe in Carlisle, Ohio,” and “Justice for Baby Carlisle” were where people obsessively tapped out their theories, “evidence” and threats – posts suggested that justice would be to “burn Skylar alive” or “have her uterus ripped out” or that “she needs a bullet”.
The headlines were equally hateful and vile: “Teen allegedly
